Milena Radzikowska

This January I was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the judges for the Cards Against Humanity, Science Ambassador Scholarship for Women. All of the 100 video submissions I reviewed showed a deep passion for and interest in the sciences. The applications and first phase of the judging period are now closed. A full tuition scholarship for a woman seeking an undergraduate degree in science, engineering, or math will be awarded. The scholarship is, funded from Cards Against Humanity’s Science Pack—a 30–card expansion pack co–authored with Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal’s Zach Weinersmith and Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait.Read More →

Materializing Text Analytical Experiences: the Bubblelines Hydra Project There is a tradition in the digital humanities of interpreting texts through various forms of computer-generated text analysis and visualization. For example, the Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) and Voyant.org both provide online access to a broad-range of tools for work with a variety of data. However, these systems require a significant learning curve, both for students and senior humanities scholars. In addition, the standard computer screen and its interfaces can conceal the vastness and complexity of the material under study. In this project, we experimented with creating new forms of interface that leverage physicality and kinesthetic intelligence (Ruecker, forthcoming). There were three primary objectives:Read More →

A large component of the design learning in the 3rd year is idea generation and concept development. In COMM 3610, we combine that with advanced-level typography and layout. Students focus on designing two, connected parts: a new typographic system and grid design for an article; and a visual pull that dominates the first spread. The design has to be based on a unique, well-written, appropriate, and defendable concept. The concept must demonstrate tension – it must be compelling and “exciting” in both idea and execution.Read More →

For this 1st project in ARTS 398 Data Visualization (at U. Nebraska), students were asked to consider the last few decades of their life with a view of answering the following question: How did I get here? As they thought through this question, they considered the following: not everything that appears important is important in the context of this question some things that might, on first thought, appear inconsequential might actually have been important aspects of your journey your objective is not to tell us your entire biography, nor to simply highlight key life events. Instead, your goals are (1) to consider what is a data set; and (2) to exploreRead More →

For this project the COMM 3610 Visual Communication for Information Designers I students worked with one of the data sets available through the Government of Canada web site. They were asked to find an interesting, unique, and compelling story within the data sets. Their objectives were to explore the use of a variety of information graphics to communicate data; construct a cohesive, well structured, information and visually-rich design; focus on clear communication, strong typography, and graphical (not photographic) content; and communicate the multidimensionality of the topic.Read More →

Completed Presented Co-authors 2013 Proceedings of the International Congress of International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR). Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan. Piotr Michura, Stan Ruecker, & the INKE Research Group In this paper, we report on a tool we developed for use by our students as part of a senior-level undergraduate degree course in Information Design. Students were asked to re-design a web site for a local not-for-profit agency. The first part of the project asked them to conduct an environmental scan on the topic most closely related to the client: HIV / AIDS, using a new tool we developed, comprised ofRead More →

Completed Published Co-authors 2013 Literary and Linguistic Computing. 28(4), 615-628. Luciano Frizzera, Geoff Roeder, Ernesto Peña, Teresa Dobson, Stan Ruecker, Geoffrey Rockwell, Susan Brown, & the INKE Research Group In this paper, we provide a discussion of the concept of visual interactive workflows, how they relate to our previous work on structured surfaces, and how they have been adapted to experiments in managing articles for journal publication and managing biographical histories being written and tagged in XML. We conclude with a user experience study of the prototypes, which suggests that they are relatively acceptable at the level of reflective response, but might benefit from moreRead More →

Completed Presented Co-authors November 2015 IASDR: The International Association of Societies of Design Research conference, Brisbane, Australia Stan Ruecker & Stéfan Sinclair In this paper, we discuss a strategy for introducing significant change in general, and in the Digital Humanities in particular. The approach is to negotiate expectations early in a research project by genuinely proposing what might be understood as a “critical design” intervention, in order to produce an effect in the minds of the various stakeholders where a small incremental change will not be felt to be appropriate. Critical design is an attempt to radically interrupt people’s thinking on a subject by designing artifacts thatRead More →

Completed Published Co-authors November 2014 Scholarly and Research Communication 5.2: n. pag. Piotr Michura, Stan Ruecker, Gerry Derksen, Teresa Dobson, & the INKE Research Group In the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) project, our primary focus has been on text. In this article, we discuss our recent innovations in finding ways to capture the subjective interpretation of visual information that is in some way connected with texts. Previous work has focused on text-based semantic differentials, but our current project extends beyond to triads, and beyond text-based difference poles to image-based difference poles. As our case study, we apply the method to illustrated book covers for LewisRead More →

ampDamp is an web browser extension that interacts with a USB knob to manipulate social media websites. Binary controls provided within existing platforms offer a vast horizon of possible interactions and mute the dynamism of social media environments. Our current design is focused specifically on improving peer to peer learning on Twitter. Users twists the physical knob connected to the computer via a USB. The ampDamp device driver receives the signal and sends it to the browser at which point the ampDamp browser extension takes that signal and extracts tweet features based on the mouse pointer location. The extension selects all tweets that match theRead More →